This invention relates to the field of guest registration systems and door lock control apparatuses for places of lodging, such as hotels, motels, boarding houses, rooming houses, bed-and-breakfasts, and the like and to buildings or other facilities having numerous doors whose locks must be controlled. It relates to an improved registration system which handles most check-in and departure situations without the need for a desk clerk. It also includes a door lock control apparatus by which virtually any number of doors in a facility may be centrally controlled without the need for electrical wiring between the doors and a central control system.
In the lodging industry, and especially in the hotel and motel portions thereof, it has become commonplace to maintain computer records of guests and room availability. These records are constantly available to track the time that a guest stays at the place of lodging, the billing information for the guest, the room assignments and vacancies for the place of lodging, and other information. Such information is now usually entered manually by hotel employees. Most places of lodging utilize a front desk manned by an employee and at which registration information is obtained, a mode of payment is arranged and room keys are dispensed and collected. All these somewhat routine but personal tasks require most hotels and motels to staff their front desks 24 hours a day.
For some large hotel and motel chains, sufficient personnel time is available to staff the front desk at all times, to process arriving and departing guests, and to give out and collect room keys. However, small hotels and motels, including even the smaller or regional chains, and particularly individual or family owned units, often do not have the personnel or the resources to staff a front desk at all times. In many situations, the only staff at the smaller establishments is the proprietor or the immediate family of the proprietor, because limited operating budgets may be more wisely spent in activities other than staffing a front desk during inactive shifts. This smaller personnel base often means that guests arriving at off hours must ring a bell or buzzer for assistance, waking the manager or proprietor. Even large hotels, although able to staff the front desk at all times, may also have better ways of using operating dollars as opposed to constant staffing of the desk.
A major reason for needing a manned front desk has been the need to dispense and collect room keys. In recent years, the room key has evolved from the easily misplaced or duplicated metal key, to plastic hole-encoded punch cards, and then to plastic magnetically encoded room key cards proprietary to the hotel or motel and dispensed from the front desk. The latter key cards are useable only at the place of lodging and operate by the use of a magnetic card reader at the door of a guest room to actuate the guest room door lock after the card has been recognized and approved.
Hotel room key security is an ongoing problem when conventional keys and key cards are used. While a guest has some concerns about loss of his room key, it is seldom given the same level of concern as would be assigned to the guest's personal keys, wallet or the like. The guest's level of concern also varies with his perceived risk as, for example, a guest being fairly unconcerned with key security before he has physically placed his property in the guest room or after he has removed the property. Guests may even voluntarily allow others to use their hotel key, resulting in a still lower standard of security. The guest seldom realizes that each time the key is lost or available to unauthorized persons, that room security is jeopardized in some way, such as the room's equipment being vulnerable to damage, theft or other intrusion. Because of these attitudes hotel guest room key problems are substantially greater and more numerous than those encountered for a private residence. The present invention provides a workable solution to these difficulties.
With these shortcomings in mind there remains a need for a guest registration system which can successfully receive and also discharge the guest and address the problem of delivery and collection of a room key when employees are not available to assist the guest.
Similar room entry problems exist in many buildings and facilities other than hotels and motels. For example, office buildings, hospitals, many government and commercial buildings, schools and colleges, as well as certain apartment complexes have large numbers of doors which must frequently be retained in a locked condition while still requiring that the rooms be accessible to authorized persons. To allow central control of each of the many doors in such structures can be an expensive undertaking if control wiring must be extended from a central control point to each room and its entry door. It is desirable to provide an apparatus by which specific entry cards can be utilized as a key at each of these many doors and that each of the doors be capable of being programmed and reprogrammed to recognize specific cards. Even in situations where doors use conventional keys and are not provided with entry cards and entry card readers, the ability to quickly lock and unlock doors in a large facility can be highly desirable in order to permit rapid access of fire fighting crews and other emergency personnel when needed. Using conventional lock systems, which cannot be controlled by a central control system, emergency personnel when called to fight a fire at such a facility may be compelled to destroy locked doors in order to gain entry, and the amount of fire damage which can occur before doors can be effectively forced opened can be extensive. It is an object of the invention to provide a door control apparatus which will allow multiple doors in a facility to be unlocked by wireless, remote command in order to quickly deal with an emergency situation and allow access of fire and emergency personnel to all controlled rooms when necessary. Installation of such a system has been economically prohibitive when control wiring must be installed between the central control system and each room. In such situations, the cost of cutting through walls, removing wallpaper, upsetting carpet arrangements and the like is so aesthetically intrusive as to discourage the installation of a central lock control system.
Another shortcoming of most door control systems is that little or no information is available to the central control system as to the conditions at each room door, i.e. whether the lock is in locked or unlocked condition, whether the door is fully closed in the door jamb, or any information as to the card holders who have accessed the door and the times of access. It is desirable to have a door control system in which such information can be periodically transmitted to the control system for effective monitoring of the door for security and maintenance purposes.
Still another shortcoming of present lock control systems is that it is difficult and expensive to add additional doors or rooms to an existing door control system once a system is installed because most such systems operate with wiring which must be connected to each door and which requires extensive installation procedures. It is desirable to provide a system by which additional rooms and doors may be quickly added to the door control system without destroying or interfering with the aesthetics of the building.
The invention provides a solution to these shortcomings.